


I Have Measured out My Life with Coffee Spoons

by SomethingWitty



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2018-01-01 17:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomethingWitty/pseuds/SomethingWitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It could be said that the longest and most consistent relationship of Leonard McCoy's life was that which he had with his daily cup of coffee.</p><p>Or, eleven vignettes throughout Leonard McCoy's life involving coffee, Jocelyn, coffee, Jim, coffee, and Joanna (Among many others).</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Have Measured out My Life with Coffee Spoons

**Author's Note:**

> This was a little writing exercise for me. The idea was to take an everyday object and try to find its role throughout the character's life. I chose coffee and Bones, because I love coffee and Bones, clearly. 
> 
> I wanted to make Jocelyn a sympathetic character, just because it's not something that's done a lot. I like Evil!Jocelyn just as much as the next reader, but it is fun to see her and Leonard working as a team sometimes. Also, I tried to write them as being affectionate early in their relationship because the two did get married, after all, so clearly there was love there at some point. 
> 
> Also, cookies go to anyone who can spot the vague Tarsus reference.

 

"I Have Measured out My Life with Coffee Spoons" – T.S. Eliot

\---

David McCoy drinks coffee like it’s an Olympic sport he’s competing in. Young Leonard learns early on how to operate the vintage coffee maker in the corner of the McCoy family’s kitchen. David shuns the modern coffee replicators that can produce a steaming cup of coffee from a flavor chip in 2.4 seconds. He says it’s disrespectful to the bean and shameful to the art of brewing. Leonard giggles when David goes off on his coffee tirades, so passionate about the correct way to brew and the heinous crime of instant coffee. Leonard’s still too young to drink coffee the way his Daddy does, but every once in a while David will let his son try a sip, and every time Leonard tastes it his nose pinches up and his lips pull into a grimace. David chuckles at his son’s expression, even more amused by the fact that Leonard just keeps asking to try the coffee again, wanting so much to be like his Dad that Leonard even wants to drink what his Daddy drinks, no matter how awful it must taste to a child.

"It’s an acquired taste, son." David explains kindly, "Someday you won’t be able to get enough of the stuff."

And Leonard keeps asking to try the coffee, day after day. Eleanor McCoy smiles down at her son fondly, offering a sip of her own Arabian Brew. Slowly, over years and years, Leonard’s grimaces at the yucky flavor become happy sighs at the warm and toasted smell of a fresh cup. He begins sneaking cups of the stuff behind his parent’s backs, because no matter how many single sips David and Eleanor are willing to let their son try, they’re not going agree to knowingly give him whole cups of the stuff.

By the time he’s fifteen Leonard is a slave to the Java, frequently bringing home bags of different flavored beans to sample and looking up different brewing techniques. Some of the most peaceful moments of his young life were those pre-dawn mornings spent with his Dad before Leo would go off to school and David went off to work, and he and his Dad would talk about medicine, politics, Georgia, anything and everything, drinking coffee and watching the sunrise.

 

* * *

 

"Coffee - the favorite drink of the civilized world." ― Thomas Jefferson

\---

He takes Jocelyn Darnell ice-skating and then to local coffee shop for their first date. It’s mid-December and it’s cold enough that the ice-skating rinks in the city are open for the season. She convinces him to go out onto the ice despite his protests, all she had to do was pout her pink-painted lips and Leonard was like putty in her hands. They strap on skates and she leads him onto the rink, keeping his gloved hand tight in her small, mitten-covered one. They do laps around the rink, talking about school and friends and bands they like; Jocelyn never surrenders Leonard’s hand even as he becomes more sure of his footing (It’s not like he would’ve let her hand go anyway, for anything short of himself taking a nose-dive into the ice). They skate in large circles, Jocelyn occasionally pulling ahead to skate backwards so she could talk to him face-to-face, her profile framed from behind by the blues, pinks, and reds of the setting Georgia sun. Finally the chill left by sunset settles in and Jocelyn’s rosy cheeks prompt Leonard to take her to the local coffee shop, Common Grounds.

He holds the door open for her and takes her black pea-coat from her as she shrugs it off before they head to the register to order. They find a seat in the corner with windows on both sides so they can watch the fluffy flakes of snow lazily drift down in the dim hue of the streetlights. She’s wearing a dark green cardigan over a black tank top, and Leonard finds it difficult to not stare at her long auburn hair as she twirls it around her manicured fingers, the stray ends coming to rest on her shoulder. He says something that must be funny because she laughs – he doesn’t even know what’s coming out of his mouth right now – and the way her hazel eyes shine when she smiles at him warms his heart even more than the steaming cup of coffee warms his hands as he grasps it.

He drives her home around ten and walks by her side up the wooden stairs of her family’s classic Queen Anne home. After a lifetime of warnings and lecturing from his Mother he’s all prepared to be a proper gentleman and bid her goodnight, so he doesn’t expect it when she kisses him lightly on his lips and he’s too shocked to do much more than let her plant it on him. Her breath smells of coffee, which should be disgusting on anyone else, but for Leonard it only enamors him more to this long-haired, adventurous girl who, against all reason, has agreed to let him take her out for the evening.

"See you in school on Monday, Leo." She says with honey sweetness and a sly smile as she pulls away from him and opens the front door.

Leonard can’t keep the dopey smile off his face for the rest of the night.

* * *

 

"It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity." ― Dave Barry

\---

Med school final exams are a bitch. They’re also the only standing between Leonard and a three week break from school that he plans to spend with the lovely Jocelyn Darnell-soon-to-be-McCoy. He’s in his second year of medical school at Emory University and trying to review endocrinology. He’s been studying for seven hours straight and he can no longer differentiate between the words hyperparathyroidism and hypopituitarism because the text on the pages is beginning to blur and _dammit_ his coffee cup is empty.

Leonard has imbibed so much coffee over the last three days of marathon studying that the fluid in his arteries and veins may be more coffee than actual blood at this point. His brain is yelling at him to sleep but there just isn’t time for it, not with the 84 pages of notes he still needs to get through before he can even think of starting to study for the other units he’ll be tested over.

He glances back at his empty paper cup and sighs as he starts to pack up his things so he can go to the campus café in the North quad.

Forty minutes later, Leonard is concertedly trying to keep himself from punching the man in front of him. They’re in line at the campus café and Leonard has been waiting in this stupid queue for nearly a half an hour, all to get the tar that Emory University tries to pass off as drinkable coffee. Leonard doesn’t have much of a choice, though. It’s nearing eleven at night so  most coffee shops in town are closed for the evening and going to sleep is absolutely not an option right now, so here he is, one patron away from the cash register and his sweet cup of nectar awaiting. Except, of course, for the fact that the man in front of him is currently complaining to the poor barista behind the counter that his vanilla hazelnut almond-milk half-caf who-the-hell-cares latte isn’t pretentious enough…or something, Leonard tuned him out minutes ago around the second time the dick made the barista remake his coffee. The people behind Leonard are grumbling and he shares the sentiment with gusto. The harried-looking girl hands the man a fresh cup and he sips from it with a loud slurp like he’s some kind of enology enthusiast at a wine tasting. The guy smacks his lips together and his face morphs into a pinched expression like someone had secretly managed to piss in his coffee cup. He roughly puts the paper cup down and some of the coffee spills over onto the counter. 

"I _said_ I wanted light whip cream. This clearly has regular whip cream. If I’m going to pay six credits for a latte it’d damn well better be exactly what I tell you, or is that too hard for you to understand? It must be, since this is the third time I’ve told you my order."

The girl behind the counter looks torn between crying or grabbing the cup of scalding coffee and throwing it on the man.

Leonard’s tenuous control over his temper snaps and he grabs the guy by his shoulder to turn him around.

"Listen here, asshole. There’s an entire line of people behind you who just want a damn cup of black, plain coffee and who _aren’t_ going to give this nice girl here a hassle about it. And for the record, you didn’t tell her to use light whip cream, you pretentious ass, so why don’t you take your ostentatious little cup of douche-bag-blend and get out of here, because frankly none of us have the time or patience for your bullshit."

The man blinks at him, face scrunching and for one second it seems like he’s going to fight back, muscles in his jaw tensing and mouth shifting into some kind of rebuttal. Leonard simply stares the man down with all the agitation and frustration of a frenzied second-year medical student and there must be something particularly manic in his eyes because the guy basically wilts in front of him and briskly walks away, shoulders hunched and snob-coffee clutched in his hand.

There’s scattered applause behind him as he walks up to the empty space at the counter left by the man, the spilled coffee puddle still pooling next the tip jar. The barista looks at him with such appreciation that Leonard is almost brought out of his sour medical school-induced misanthropy.

"Large coffee, black, please."

She doesn't charge him for the drink.

He leaves the campus café and treks back to the Library, debating to himself in a muttered voice about the risks and rewards of directly infusing the coffee into his veins via an IV. People are staring. Leonard doesn’t give a damn.

 

* * *

 

"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee." - Abraham Lincoln

\---

The coffee at Marietta Memorial Hospital in Georgia is possibly, just possibly, worse than the coffee at Emory University, and _damn_ is that saying something. The ancient machine in the staff lounge oscillates between producing black-super-bold coffee and faintly-brown-tinted water.

Often Jocelyn will surprise him by bringing him a thermos of her specially-made French roast with a hint of hazelnut, especially when she knows he’s heading into a long shift. If there’s time and the patient load is light, they’ll sit together in the on-call room and talk about nothing and everything. Jocelyn’s wedding ring will clack against the porcelain of her mug as she shifts it from hand to hand. She’s taken to drinking decaffeinated tea now, and Leonard eyes drift lower to the barely-noticeable swell of her belly. He smiles into his mug as he thinks about the life he’s building here, a whip-smart and beautiful wife, a baby on the way, and a meteorically rising medical career. He looks up from his coffee cup, smile broadening as he meets Jocelyn’s warm eyes staring back at him. He reaches across the table to hold her hand.

His eighty-or-more hour workweeks pay off and three years into his residency he finds himself named Chief Resident of Surgery. David claps him on the back and Eleanor’s eyes shine with wetness as she congratulates him. It’s been a tough road, no doubt. The life of a surgeon is hard as Hell and so stressful that he’s perpetually tense and anxious, unable to keep himself from bringing work home with him (Because dammit a Doctor doesn’t have a 9 – 5 job, your patients are always there and could need you at any moment, you don't get to 'turn off'). He finds that a nightcap helps, maybe a small glass of gin or whiskey, just enough to calm his nerves and lull him to sleep. Jocelyn says something about it one night, but he'd just come home from a 16 hour shift and he tells her in a clipped tone that he's bone tired and doesn't want to fight with her. Her face closes off at his tone and he feels like a dick. He makes sure that a large bouquet of roses are delivered to their house the next day for her as an apology and things are okay after that.

Time passes. He starts to notice that Jocelyn doesn’t visit him at work with her trademark coffee as much anymore, but he can’t blame her either. She’s decided to be a stay-at-home Mom to raise Joanna until their daughter is old enough to go to kindergarten, and that’s a full time job in itself. Part of him does wish Joce would bring Joanna to work sometimes. He doesn’t get to see his little girl anywhere near as often as he’d like, and his job has already pulled him away from so many key moments with her. He missed her first word ("Mama") because he was performing an emergency splenectomy. He missed her first steps because he was repairing intestinal adhesions on an elderly woman. Jocelyn isn’t happy about it, and neither is Leonard, of course, but what can he do? This is life and death for his patients and Leonard would be selfish to put his own needs above his patients.

David gets sick and any free time Leonard might have had immediately gets dedicated to treating his Father and doing his damndest to find a cure.

He fails.

His regrets and guilty thoughts circle around his head like vultures flying around a dying animal. He can't sleep with his mind racing so. And if his small glass of bourbon before bed becomes a large glass or two, well, Jocelyn doesn't think it's worth mentioning it anymore.

By the time Leonard finishes his residency and becomes an Attending at the hospital, Jocelyn hasn’t brought him coffee in months. Hasn’t smiled at him in months either, it seems. Leonard sits in the dark of the windowless on-call room alone with a scalding cup of blacker-than-the-abyss hospital coffee held by both hands. He stares at the Hospital Comm that has a request asking for a surgeon to perform an emergency laparotomy on a young boy. He stares at his personal Comm that has a message from Jocelyn asking him to go to Joanna’s soccer game.

He closes his eyes with something approximating shame, turns off his personal Comm, and answers the hospital’s request.

He couldn't save his father. He can save the little boy.

 

* * *

 

"I'd rather take coffee than compliments just now." ― Louisa May Alcott

\---

He should’ve known something was going on when, for the first time in almost a year, Jocelyn sets a cup of steaming hot French roast in front of him as he sits at their breakfast table. Her gaze is wandering all over the room, staring everywhere but directly at him.

"Leo, we need to talk." She says, eyes boring a hole into the table.

He looks at her, really looks at her, for the first time in years. Her hair is still a coppery auburn and she’s still wearing her favorite shade of green, but her long hair has been cut short into a more utilitarian bob and there are fine lines around her lips and hazel eyes. She’s still beautiful by anyone’s standard, but when Leonard looks at her he doesn’t feel the rush he used to. He doesn’t feel the butterflies or the hot lust or the bubbling affection that he did when they were dating and newly married. He looks down at the cup in her hands; it’s not filled with coffee, it’s tea. He wonders why she’s drinking tea. She’s not pregnant - couldn’t be. Her French roast isn’t the only thing Leonard hasn’t had in months. Her fingers nervously tap the mug and he notices, with a burst of nausea in his stomach so strong that he actually feels dizzy for a moment, that she isn’t wearing her ring.

Leonard closes his eyes and hangs his head. He wants to fight for Jocelyn, fight to keep this thing they have going, but he’s a hell of a realist and already knows that it’s a war long-since lost. It’s a war that he perpetuated every time he answered the hospital’s comms instead of his wife’s. Every time he elected to go to a medical conference instead of a vacation with his young family. Every time Joce wanted to talk and he just wanted to dive head-first into his guilt and bourbon. He was just doing his duty as a Doctor and he feels no shame for that – but he neglected his duties as a husband and father, and the weight of that knowledge settles to the bottom of his gut like a stone.

"You’re not even going to fight for this, are you?" Jocelyn asks him with a hoarse voice and he looks up to see tears in her eyes. "Joanna doesn’t know you, Len. She doesn’t _know you_." Joce is referring to a terrible moment weeks ago when he’d walked into Joanna’s room one night after getting off work late. He’d wanted to say goodnight to her even if she was already sleeping. Joanna had woken up at the sound of her door opening and, not recognizing the man in the doorway, the four-year-old had screamed in terror and yelled for her mother. Jocelyn had rushed into the room to hold Joanna and calm her down, squeezing between the door and her husband, who was frozen standing in shock at his daughter’s reaction to him.

"Why was your career more important than us, Leo?" Jocelyn’s voice brings him out of his thoughts.

He doesn’t have an answer, he just doesn’t.

Jocelyn sniffs and makes a visible effort to square her shoulders and compose herself. "We’ve got a meeting with the divorce lawyer on Thursday; you remember Clay Treadway from high school? He’s handling the case." She pauses and chews on her lip. "Leonard…I’m filing for joint custody. You can have some of the summer, holidays, and weekends, but I think you and I both know who’s been the one to raise our daughter." She isn’t snide when she says it, isn’t vicious; in fact, she’s speaking softly and trying to be diplomatic. She looks and sounds as tired and worn down as Leonard himself feels. All her efforts don’t stop the words from stabbing into him like a million tiny needles.

The divorce proceeds along. Jocelyn gets nearly full custody. Leonard gets to see Jo once in a while and he tries, dammit, he tries to be a good father and to make up for lost time, but all Jo wants to know when she’s with him is how soon can she go back to her Momma’s house. One day, Jo lets slips that her Momma and Mr. Clay are moving to a big town called Houston that’s far away and would Daddy please, please let her spend all summer with them in Texas instead of staying in Georgia with him?

His wife has left him for an old high school friend and his daughter feels as much emotional attachment to him as she does to an Uncle. His Father is dead because of Leonard's incompetence and his Mother can't look him in the eye because she knows what he did.

His morning coffee slowly becomes more alcohol than coffee, until there’s not any coffee at all and the drink burns his throat on the way down.

 

* * *

 

"There is nothing better than a good friend, great conversation and a hot cup of coffee."  - Unknown

\---

Leonard is warm and floating, bundled in six layers of blankets that wrapped him up in a fluffy cocoon. He sighs happily into his pillow, arms drawing the snug blankets closer to his chest, his room silent except for the faint chirping of birds outside his window.

Perfect, warm, and quiet….

"Bones. _Boooones_."

Son of a bitch.

It is too early for this shit. Leonard makes some desperate attempt to cover his head with his pillow, but the thin material of the foam doesn’t do much to block out the most annoying voice on the planet.

"Bones. Up and at ‘em! Rise and shine! Carpe Diem!"

That overly-cheerful bastard.

Leonard _very_ briefly entertains thoughts of murdering his best friend and where exactly he could hide the body, but his homicidal thoughts are put on the backburner when the warm and nutty smell of hazelnut coffee reaches his nose. Ok, he can negotiate with this.

Step one, remove pillow from face.

Great success.

He blearily peers up at Jim, who’s already dressed in his civvies at fuck’o’clock in the morning, _seriously?_

Jim merely continues smiling down at him, perched over his bed like a hawk bearing gifts of caffeine and enthusiasm. Leonard’s eyes are drawn immediately to the faint bruising on Jim’s nose and left cheek and he suddenly remembers manhandling Jim into his room last night after Jim, shockingly, managed to piss off some giant hulking guy at the bar by hitting on his pretty bleach-blonde fiancée.

("Was your father a thief? Cuz someone stole the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes, baby.")

Leonard had been tempted, _so tempted,_ at the time to just let Jim suffer through a broken nose for having the gall to use such a terrible pick-up line. But Leonard, clearly, was on his way to Sainthood because he still found the goodwill in his heart to patch up Jim’s nose in his dorm room on a Friday night.

Jim, too, must’ve appreciated Leonard’s efforts if he thought it fitting to bring him a coffee as gratitude.

Leonard sat on the edge of his bed in his pajamas, sipping from the plastic cup and feeling life slowly seep back into his soul. Jim sat on Leonard’s desk (the twerp), feet propped up on a chair because why would Jim Kirk ever deign himself to sit like a normal human being.

"Drink up, Bones." Jim’s voice is still a little nasally from congestion and the bar napkins that may or may not still be in his nasal cavity, "We’re taking you to the flight sim today to practice."

Those words are enough to draw Leonard out of his Coffee-induced trance. "…What, Jim?"

"The flight sim. You know, machine on hydraulics, pilot operated, necessary to pass Tactical Ops 201? The class you happen to be enrolled in?"

Damn. Leonard had nearly forgotten. Nearly got away with not letting Jim know about it, too, but what a fool Leonard was for thinking he could hide anything from Jim ‘hack-it-until-I-have-the-info-I-want’ Kirk.

"Jim, I really don’t want to mess with that shit today. I’ve got a big xenobiology exam tomorrow with Dr. Spilatro and I can’t take the afternoon off from studying."

Jim stares at him with a disbelieving expression that damn near rivals Eleanor McCoy’s, "Don’t give me that crap, Bones. I’ve been helping you study for that exam for the past week and I think you know more about it than the professor herself does, at this point. You don’t need to work on that. What you _do_ need to work on is your flight skills for the sim exam next month."

"You know about my aviophobia Jim. You’ve seen it, so don’t act like this is some easy thing for me. It’s total bullshit for a medical track cadet to have to do this anyway."

"Everyone needs to know how to fly a shuttle, Bones, and they won’t let you pass the class until you prove you can do it, and since you can’t graduate until you’ve passed the class…That’s where I come in."

Jim’s got his determined expression on his face, the expression that says ‘if you want to stop me from doing this, it’ll have to be because I am a cold, dead carcass.’ Leonard sighs and putters over to his dresser to change into his Cadet Reds.

"Come on, Bones, it’ll be fun!"

True to his word, Jim helps him. It’s slow-going and takes countless hours over the days and weeks but Leonard does slowly, _slowly,_ start to gain a little self-confidence as a pilot. Jim leans over his shoulder, not technically supposed to be in the shuttle unbuckled, but Jim knows Leonard may just flip out at any moment and his presence glued to Leonard's side helps bring Leonard back to the ground (metaphorically and literally). Jim’s right hand is helping to guide Leonard’s to the correct controls to perform evasive maneuversas he verbally coaches and his left hand is alternating between Leonard’s shoulder and the seat-back for balance, depending on the movements of the shuttle.

One day, weeks later, the two cadets exit the flight sim after Leonard finally managed to perform perfect maneuvers not once but twice in a row. Jim slings an arm over his shoulder and his grin is so proud and wide that Leonard finds himself grinning back, leaning into his friend a little and feeling so light and thrilled. Since it’s still technically the morning, Jim suggests they go get coffee, eggs, and bacon to celebrate and Leonard sure as Hell isn’t going to turn him down. If Jim’s arm doesn’t leave Leonard’s shoulder for the entire walk to the diner, well, Leonard’s riding so high right now that he certainly isn’t complaining.

 

* * *

 

"Coffee is a language in itself." - Jackie Chan

\---

The Jion’Trow people are known quandrant-wide for their hospitality. Frankly after the last two months of missions going south (Five kidnappings or hostage situations, _five_ , on _separate occasions_ ), Leonard is more than ready to take it easy and not have to patch up spear wounds or sprained antennae or strange fungal infections. The _Enterprise_ has been assigned to the planet Jion for a full week because the Jion’Trow King, a man named Ongka, has requested entrance into the Federation. By all rights and reports, they’re a peaceful people with a penchant for entertaining guests. After three days on Jion, Leonard is inclined to agree. There’ve been no stabbings, involuntary sex changes, possessions, aphrodisiac pollen, or any of the other bullshit from the last two months that Leonard has filed away in his mental box of repressed memories.

Also, their coffee is fantastic. Well, it’s not technically Earth coffee, but a very similar drink. Whatever it’s made from, the nutritionist on the _Enterprise_ cleared it for human consumption.

Leonard was pleasantly surprised to find that the Jion’Trow drink the beverage nearly continuously throughout the day, and King Ongka gave several approving clucks when Leonard expressed his appreciation of their coffee.

"We are pleased that you enjoy our prized beverage, good Physician! The beverage you currently imbibe is made only with the finest of Jion’s Traktellon!" King Ongka’s five black eyes look at him with joy, his antenna gyrating wildly on his head in excitement.

Uhura is seated to Leonard’s left and suddenly reaches for her PADD with an intent expression on her face. Jim is seated to his right and looks over to him with a smirk, his own cup of Jion Coffee steaming in the wooden bowl he’s sipping it from. Jim gives him a light nudge with his elbow, giving Leonard the green light to keep talking to the King.

Leonard clears his throat and looks back to King Ongka, "Yeah, I really like the Traktellon. That is what you call the drink, right? Traktellon?"

"No, good Physician, the Traktellon is merely the beetle that we grind to make the drink."

Leonard makes a move to adjust his universal translator as he asks, "Don't you mean ‘Bean’? The Bean you use to make the coffee."

King Ongka clucks in mirth again and shakes his head, antenna swinging as he moves, "I’m quite sure I mean Beetle, good Physician. Some of the best Traktellon Beetles on all of Jion were ground up and juiced to make the excellent beverage you so very much enjoy."

Out of the corner of his eye Leonard sees Uhura sigh as she looks at her PADD which is obviously displaying this same information to her, cup of Jion Coffee still held in one hand. Spock stiffens minutely and peers down at the wooden bowl in his hands with something nearing distrust. The security ensign on Jim’s other side makes a not-so-subtle show of spitting the drink back into her wooden cup. Leonard swishes the fluid in his mouth around, and if he thinks about it hard enough he can feel tiny grits that are probably legs and shells. Jim just keeps sipping it happily like beetle puree isn’t the worse thing he’s ever eaten, and continues making conversation with the eagerly clucking King.

 

* * *

 

"Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second." - Edward Abbey

\---

Leonard McCoy is not a twenty-three year old medical student anymore and eight cups of coffee are no longer enough to keep him awake and alert, and _dammit_ , he _needs_ to be at the top of his game, he can’t be anything less, not with his best friend’s life depending on him. Leonard hasn’t drank so much coffee with such fervor in years, and his stomach protests in nauseous waves and rolls, and his hands shake, and his knees feel unsteady.

The cryotube currently holding best friend and…whatever else they are…is sitting in the corner of the room, hooked up to the lithium power source and keeping its precious contents frozen in stasis.

Leonard’s vision blurs as he tries to read his notes from the previous night (not that 'night' and 'day' matter anymore. He hasn’t slept in at least 94 hours, frankly he’s lost count at this point). Jim would throw a hissy fit if he knew, but Jim doesn’t know, does he? Because Jim’s a corpse in a frozen cylinder. And Leonard never even got to...

Leonard shakes his head and clenches his fists.

The serum brought the tribble back to life, but a human’s biology is so much more complicated than a fucking tribble and Leonard can’t just put some untested drug into Jim’s veins. The other animal subjects have expired after he dosed them with the experimental serums and he’s running out of ideas on how to tweak the serum and even though Spock is helping with just as much, if not more, energy and experience, he’s still only got so much blood from Khan, and,

Fuck.

His thoughts begin to spin and rush.

Leonard punches his physician pass code into the medicine port and takes a handful of stimulant hypos. He’ll drink all the coffee in the world and inject himself with stimulants until his heart gives out if it will just give him the clarity and focus to find the right serum combination, to just _get Jim back_ , and he’ll say everything to Jim that he wanted to, and he’ll follow the stupid bastard into Space for as long as Jim wants to be there, and he’ll be gentler with hypos – he promises so many things. It takes him a few minutes to realize he’s begging and bargaining and praying; He’s not sure who or what he’s praying to.

 

* * *

 

"Coffee and Love are best when they are hot." – Proverb

\---

Leonard wakes to the combined smell of coffee and toast teasing his nose. He throws an arm out to the other side of the bed, finding only empty sheets with the barest trace of body heat still in them. He hears a faint clattering coming from the kitchen of his apartment and sighs in frustration – Jim knows he’s not supposed to be taking on too much yet, and Leonard is willing to bet credits that when he walks into the kitchen he’ll find Jim preparing a full breakfast.

He pushes the sheets off himself and stretches slowly and languidly like his Grandma McCoy’s old barn cat. He decreases the blur setting on the bedroom windows so he can see the San Francisco skyline, now so vastly different from just one month prior. The new view has taken some getting used to, but already the city is hard at work to rebuild. He turns the window's blur setting back on. Leonard himself may be ok with the view, but he's not sure Jim's up to it yet. He steps into his Old Man slippers (Two guesses on who makes fun of him for wearing them) and shuffles into the kitchen, dragging his feet on the wooden slated floors.

He pauses at the end of the hallway to watch his friend (who’s a hell of a lot more than a friend at this point, but ‘boyfriend’ sounds petty and he refuses to say the word ‘lover’). Jim moves slowly around the kitchen, pausing before he reaches up to grab the plates from the top shelf because his muscles and joints are still stiff and sore. He turns back to the eggs in the frying pan with such determination and focus that Leonard almost laughs until he remembers why Jim has to focus on it so intently. His hands shake as he uses both of them to lift the heavy pan (still weak, but getting stronger every day) and Leonard squashes his own desire to help out. Jim hasn’t been the most gracious patient about accepting help during his recovery these last few weeks that he’s been awake. It’s something of a point of contention between Leonard and Jim (There are other things he wants to ask Jim, questions that burn if he thinks about them too much - why didn't you ask for me at the end, why didn't you at least comm me, why?), but honestly most the time Leonard’s just still so fucking happy to have the bastard around that he can’t stay angry for too long.

Leonard continues his shuffle into the kitchen itself, greeting Jim with a hug from behind, one arm around his chest and the other around his waist. Leonard’s almost gotten used to the feeling of ribs under his hands since Jim’s down about 20 pounds, but they’re working on it and the scale’s slowing going back up. For now, Leonard keeps his hand wrapped around the other man’s narrow waist and squeezes him close, resting his head onto the crook of Jim’s neck.

"Didn’t I tell you that you’re supposed to be on bedrest?" He mumbles into the soft skin, planting a few kisses.

Jim’s voice rumbles through his chest and into Leonard’s hands and he says pointedly, "Well I got bored in bed, due to the lack of activities to keep me occupied there."

Jim is referring, of course, to the fact that even though they've decided to do this thing between the two of them, Leonard refuses to do anything more with him than some very enthusiastic making out. Leonard rolls his eyes at that, because _seriously_ , as much as he does want to take full advantage of everything Jim’s offering him on a silver plate (and _fuck_ it's unbelievably tempting), he also doesn’t want Jim to pass out in the middle of Leonard screwing him over his desk. Leonard tells him so. Jim sighs in defeat but doesn’t argue, which means on some level he agrees with Bones’ assessment. Ha, point and match.

The eggs sizzle and pop in the frying pan and Jim reaches for a spatula to chop them into small bits for scrambled egg sandwiches. The coffee maker, classic just like his Dad and Mom’s, steadily drips coffee into the pot with a hiss of steam. Leonard disentangles himself from Jim to go pour two cups of coffee, decaf now (Leonard is temporarily banned from stimulants of any kind because of a near overdose one month ago and Jim is banned from anything that’s going to upset his still-fussy stomach).

Leonard puts his own black cup on the table and pours soy creamer into Jim’s cup, placing them at their usual spots on the table. Jim carries two plates of eggs and toast to the table, setting them near the coffee cups. He slowly lowers himself into the chair with visible effort, heavily using the armrests for support as his legs shake and Leonard manages to physically restrain himself from helping Jim get situated.

Jim looks up at him with approval on his face, both with himself for his slowly-coming-back muscle control and also at Leonard for reigning in his need to be a mother-hen. Leonard feels the corners of his mouth turn upward and he seats himself in the chair opposite of Jim. He picks up his coffee and Jim does the same.

 

* * *

 

"Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break." - Earl Wilson

\---

Two years into their five year mission Leonard and the rest of the Medical team are asked to assist with a strange plague ravaging Dulcimekk III. The Captain and Spock are initially hesitant to send down the bulk of their medical staff into a plague-infested area, but subject tests done by the Xenobiology Department showed the plague to be non-communicable to humans. With those fears assuaged, McCoy, M’Benga, and the rest of the Terran medical staff were given the clear to go down planetside.

To make a long story short, Leonard, Spock, and Lieutenant Brenner worked tirelessly on isolating the pathogen, and finally discovered it to be a type of previously-unclassified bacteria. The kicker here? Their tests showed that the bacteria's metabolism could be blocked by caffeine, a totally foreign compound to the people of Dulcimekk III. Leonard beamed down to one of the planet’s overflowing hospitals with a cup of coffee and a lot of hope. He held the cup to one of the dying Dulcimekkian’s mucous membranes and slowly administered the drink to the patient under the watchful eye of the planet’s healers. Three hours later the patient was rapidly regaining its health and the healers were eagerly administering the miracle treatment to the rest of the infected patients.

The Dulcimekkians were so thankful to Leonard for curing the pestilence that the High Council was convened and decided to make him a Duke. Seriously, they gave him a castle. He and Jim stayed there on vacation for their fifth anniversary, Leonard smirking at Jim’s poorly hidden jealous pout when he saw the alligators in the moat.

 

* * *

 

"A cup of Coffee commits one to forty years of friendship" – Proverb

\---

Leonard smiled to himself as he signed the paperwork to get his mail from the Spaceport they were currently docked at for repairs. The nice thing about being on a Spaceport was that you could get tangible mail in person, not just vid-messages or replicated material. Today he’d received a package and it warmed his heart to see that it was from Joanna.

He’d put a lot of effort into building a relationship with his Daughter by trading video messages, birthday presents, and spending time with her whenever he was on Earth. It started off rocky. Joanna at four didn’t want to spend time with him because she didn’t know him. Joanna at eight didn’t want to spend time with him because she was angry at him for leaving. With Jim’s prodding and Uhura’s guidance and advice, he’d managed to open back up the lines of communication with his Daughter. It was slow going but they were getting there – she’d even begun to comm him first; she _wanted_ to talk to him. She was fifteen now, almost grown and looking into colleges for early admission. Leonard couldn’t have been prouder.

Leonard waited until he arrived back to he and Jim’s shared quarters before opening up the air seal on the package. His face broke into a wide smile as soon as he took in the sight of a dozen half-pound bags of coffee beans, all different flavors and different blends. On top of the bags was a hand-written note from Joanna all about where she’s gotten the coffee from, how much she liked the Manchester blend in particular, how much she hoped her Dad would enjoy the coffee too, since he always complained about the replicated junk that came from the Ship’s kitchen, and that he had to share it with Jim, Miss Uhura, and Mr. Spock. Leonard took the note and set it on his desk, leaning it against a picture of Joanna and himself taken on their last shore leave a few months prior.

Some part of Leonard wonders what his life would’ve been like if he hadn’t chosen work over his young family. If he and Jocelyn wouldn’t have drifted apart and if he would’ve been attentive to Jo. He thinks of himself still married to Joce and thinks about Jo having younger siblings and 4th of July cookouts in Georgia.

But then he wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t get to be on the front line of medicine, making new discoveries with every mission, he wouldn’t get to argue with an infuriating Vulcan til he was blue in the face, he wouldn’t have the easy camaraderie with his medical staff, he wouldn’t be there for Uhura’s beautiful music (the woman can play anything, he swears).

And Jim, shit. He’d have never met Jim. Wouldn’t get to argue with the brat, wouldn’t get to worry himself into nausea about him, wouldn’t get to be held in that octopus-like grip every night smothered with sloppy kisses and stubble burn.

So which life would he choose?

It was no contest, really. Because in truth, Jocelyn is happy with Clay. Leonard and Joanna finally have a father-daughter relationship. Joanna loves Jim and the rest of the Crew (She thinks of Uhura as a wise older sister and, Leonard fears, she’s developing a puppy crush on Spock, the horror).

Give Leonard a spaceship, give him blue-eyed smiles, give him Vulcan logic, give him a crew that’s his family and that would do anything for one of their own, give him a wonderful daughter and an ex-wife he’s at peace with.

Leonard takes the bag of Manchester blend beans down to the kitchen to brew a few pots and get a tray of mugs. He heads to Rec Room 3 where he knows his friends and crew are waiting. He offers a cup to Jim who’s currently playing chess with Spock. Jim happily takes the warm cup and his entire body seems to inflate as he breathes in the steam rising from it. Leonard then walks over to Uhura who is strumming her miniature harp for Chekov, Sulu, and Carol, who are all listening to it intently. Uhura nods at him to set a cup down next to her with a smile and thanks. Chekov and Sulu accept their mugs with enthusiasm and Carol nods to him sweetly (Even after two years she still has yet to believe they’ve forgiven her for her father’s actions – Hell, they never blamed her in the first place. If anything, she saved them) and holds out her peitit hand to accept a mug.

Leonard walks back over to the chess game and holds out a mug to Spock. He knows Vulcans don’t normally care for coffee, but dammit he’s feeling good and generous. To his surprise Spock takes the mug with green-veined hands and tilts his head at Leonard in wordless thanks. Leonard smirks back at him and heads to Uhura’s table. He takes a seat and listens to her play as he sips the coffee sent to him by his baby girl, watching Jim and Spock and their silent duel of wills over a 3D chessboard, Jim’s face is bordering on constipated-looking while Spock looks damn smug for someone who's not supposed to express emotion.

He looks at the faces in the room, his family, and he looks down into his coffee mug and finds that he is happy.

 

 


End file.
